


Progress

by SchweenWinchester



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hanzo Goes To Therapy, Hanzo Shimada Gets His Man Juice, Hormones, Needles, Past Drug Addiction, Past Drug Use, Testosterone, Trans, Trans Character, Trans Hanzo Shimada, Trans Male Character, and also faces his past addiction issues, intramuscular testosterone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:21:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25794313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SchweenWinchester/pseuds/SchweenWinchester
Summary: Hanzo reflects on past bad habits and considers a newer, better habit- one that lets him be himself.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	Progress

It was funny, really.

Here he was, sitting on the floor of the bathroom, a needle in his hand once again. His past self would scream at him, rage, assume the worst. That he was giving up and running to the easiest form of release. That all of that hard work- and oh, it had been  _ hard _ \- amounted to nothing, that he had lost all of his progress. All that time and money and effort flushed down the drain. His old sponsor would have been furious. Why bother going to all those meetings for all those years? What about all that  _ progress _ ?

But this was a vastly different needle, filled with a vastly different substance that would have a vastly different effect on his body than the last one.

That voice still nagged all vicious at the back of his mind. There were other ways of going about this, some of which avoided the need for syringes entirely. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have options. Certainly he could find alternatives.

Still, it felt fitting. The needle had nearly destroyed him. Now the needle would rebuild him.

This needle held progress.

That didn’t stop him from spending the past twenty minutes staring at the thing, trying to build the courage to pop the damned thing into his flesh and move ahead with his life. Like a dart, they had told him, away from the blood vessels. Into the thick meat of his thigh. Much different than hunting a good vein in his arms between all the old, healed track marks. Having his blood taken had brought back a lot of memories as the phlebotomist wordlessly worked to find  _ somewhere _ not covered in scars to draw from, even as their eyes judged him. Fine, let them. The newest ones were years old and he was proud of it. Those scars signified his hard earned progress.

Deep breath. The stuff in the syringe was a transparent pale yellow, thick and viscous. He wasn’t certain what kind of oil they were using nowadays, probably something chemically identical to something the body made and would absorb quickly. He hadn’t bothered trying to research it. Didn’t seem that important, really.

He cursed quietly at his foolishness. He should have done the cream, or the implant, or anything besides the needle. His past self was screaming, raging in his ear for daring to hold something that so resembled his biggest vice. Would it trigger him into a backslide? Would the bite of the needle feel too good again? After all, there had been some satisfaction to that old, destructive sensation, of the sight of the thing sinking under his skin.

Perhaps he should have had the nurse administer his first shot at the clinic, instead.

No. No, he needed to do this, needed to prove to himself that he was still strong, still able to take care of himself, able to move on and ahead. Progress. He needed to see that he had made progress. This was a challenge like so many others. He could do this. He could take his life into his own damned hands and be better.

He still held his breath as he pulled the muscle to the side and stabbed the needle into his leg, like staking a vampire. Unsubtle. None of the gentleness of his old habit. That certainly felt different enough to keep his demons quiet as he first checked to see if any blood had entered the syringe, then depressed the plunger, sending that half milliliter of oily  _ stuff _ into his thigh. Feel that ache around the bubble of fluid inside of him. No cool, easy rush entering his bloodstream the way he’d feared. Not like the last needle. Not at all.

Tightness grabbed him around the heart. It was done. No going back. Out came the needle, the spot covered quickly with a Band-Aid as he massaged the site, trying to work it through the muscle and into the rest of his body. Syringe in the sharps bin. Wipe off the top of the phial with an alcohol pad. First day of the rest of his life.

The first shot of countless many to come.

The first shot that meant that he really had recovered. That he was going to be okay and that he had finally given himself permission to take his life into his own hands. That he would be more than his past, his bad habits, his mistakes, his misdeeds. That he really was Hanzo.

Progress.

**Author's Note:**

> This was an alternate fic I wrote for the Hanzo Goes To Therapy Zine, which ultimately didn't get used so I'm slapping the bitch up here for y'all's edification.
> 
> I will not stop until everyone is infected with my trans headcanon brainworms. Mark my words.


End file.
